That’s not to say that Apple hasn’t spread its wings in recent years. Right now, the company makes iPhones, iPads, iPods, iMacs, MacBooks, the HomePod, Apple TV, AirPods, Apple Pencil and Apple Watch. Plus, it fields a growing number of software-based services like Apple Music and iCloud.

Drill down into some of these categories and you often find several generations of product under each banner. The iPhone X, iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus are, technically, the current-generation iPhones. But Apple still sells the iPhone SE, iPhone 6s, iPhone 6s Plus, iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus.

Things are nowhere near as bad as they were during the 1990s, when Apple computers had unwieldy names like the Macintosh Quadra 660AV (also called the Macintosh Centris 660AV). Nonetheless, it’s a far cry from when Jobs returned to Apple in 1997. He quickly dialed back the Apple lineup to a simple grid of easily remembered products.

Apple’s a different company now

Here in 2018, we get that Apple has changed. It’s a much larger company than the one Jobs rescued from bankruptcy.

Selling products to an enormous worldwide customer base means Apple must offer more variation. Rival manufacturers have also upped their game. If Apple did not produce a phablet-size iPhone, some customers would simply go with a competitor instead.

But Apple’s product names have nonetheless become a bit complicated. It started with the interim “s” model between full-number iPhones, although it’s gotten a whole lot worse since then.

In 2014, Apple split the iPhone into the 4.7-inch regular model and the 5.5-inch iPhone Plus models.

In 2017, it skipped the “s” model to jump straight to the iPhone 8. At the same time, it released the iPhone X to mark the iPhone’s 10th anniversary (X is the Roman numeral for 10). The iPhone 8 Plus is larger than the iPhone X, but has a smaller display. Got it?

How Apple could simplify iPhone names

That’s not bad — and while we might quibble about the “X” hanging around past the anniversary year, it’s no different from OS X lasting for more than a decade in different versions.

Cupertino’s been through this before. Apple dubbed the original iPad’s successor the “iPad 2.” Its follow-up? The “New iPad,” followed by the “iPad Air,” and then back to plain old “iPad.” With the Mac, Apple more or less has stuck to its guns, naming each generation the same as the prior model.

Simplifying iPhone names as Cihra suggests would not sort out the problem of how we would refer to older models if Apple keeps selling them, though. Maybe calling each year’s model simply “iPhone” (or “iPhone X”) with no identifying suffix would make things even worse, especially as consumers hold onto old smartphones longer.

Maybe, here in 2018, it’s time we just gave up on a simple approach to naming iPhones and other Apple products.